Tag: Celtic

Just watch the game. You’ll understand. Even though Celtic completed an unbeaten Scottish Premiership season last Sunday, the focus was far less on the 34 wins and four draws this season than on one win 50 years ago. Likewise, the previous Thursday, when Celtic ran lanes through a disinterested Partick Thistle, in front of a stand-full of fans with banners and flags replicating those carried and waved in Lisbon’s Estadio Nacional on May 25th 1967. But if you watch the game, you’ll understand. If you aren’t a Celtic fan, “Lisbon Lions” fatigue possibly set in ages ago. Some old...

OK. I laughed…and laughed when Celtic’s Mikael Lustig slalomed through Rangers’ traffic-cone defence and plonked a 20-yard effort into the corner of the net at Ibrox the other Saturday. And Celtic’s dominance of the two recent meetings with the post-liquidation Rangers has, not before time, reflected the gulf in class between the clubs, on-field and off. But I am as unenamoured with the “Old Firm” fixture as ever, thanks not only to fans’ behaviour but also Sky Sports’ continuing insanely unprofessional coverage of it. Whatever your views on Rangers’ existing after liquidation, the “Old Firm” itself, an alleged mutual...

I enjoyed watching AFC Wimbledon in 2003/04’s Combined Counties League; a team with larger support than clubs five steps higher in England’s ‘National Game’ consistently hammering sometimes literally “pub teams.” These four-or-more-goal processions were not everybody’s cup-of-tea. Wimbledon won games stylishly. But the lack of competitive edge disconcerted many fellow-neutrals. And when this scenario plays out in the top league in the land, it is more disconcerting still. Celtic are cakewalking to this year’s Scottish Premiership title. And their home game against Hamilton Academicals on Tuesday seemed an ideal opportunity to discover how. It was… though not quite as...

“Resolution 12” was a simple query about granting one licence to one club in 2011, when they did not apparently qualify for that licence. It has dragged on because that simple query remains unanswered. Resolution 12 to Celtic plc’s November 2013 AGM asked Celtic’s board to: refer to the Uefa Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), the licensing administration practices of the SFA, requesting the CFCB undertake a review and investigate the SFA’s implementation of UEFA & SFA license compliance requirements, with regard to qualification, administration and granting of licenses to compete in football competitions under both SFA and UEFA...

It was front-page news on October 12th. A Daily Record investigation. “Celtic and the tax dodge firm,” screamed the headline. £434m in unpaid tax. Rangers Tax Case? Relative peanuts. Many Scottish football fans would consider the existence of a Record newspaper investigation into anything front-page news in itself. The Record played its full part in missing the Rangers liquidation story, the biggest in Scottish football history, as it unfolded in the years leading up to 2012. More recently, they ignored a damning report into Scottish football governance by the Tax Justice Network. And they are currently missing/ignoring the financial...